This invention relates to a vehicle-onboard apparatus system in which a vehicle-onboard machine such as a navigation apparatus and a portable terminal such as a smartphone are coupled to each other for communication.
In the vehicle-onboard apparatus system including the vehicle-onboard machine and the portable terminal coupled to the vehicle-onboard machine for communication, there is proposed a form in which various services are provided for the vehicle-onboard machine from a service provider server installed at a different location from a vehicle. The vehicle-onboard machine is an apparatus installed on a passenger vehicle or a commercial vehicle, and includes a navigation apparatus for guiding a route to a destination, and an apparatus for using a telematics service. The portable terminal includes a smartphone.
In such a system, the vehicle-onboard machine can use various services provided by the service provider server by communicating, via communication lines (carrier networks) of a portable phone, data to/from the server.
As the smartphone becomes popular, there is conceivable such a form in which an application provided by the service provider is downloaded on the smartphone, and the downloaded application is used by the vehicle-onboard machine coupled to the smartphone. In this application form, the smartphone acquires data via the carrier network from the server and outputs the acquired data to the vehicle-onboard machine, and then the vehicle-onboard machine displays the data. It should be noted that, in this application form, a service provider may prepare the vehicle-onboard machine, or the service provider may provide a development environment for the vehicle-onboard machine.
If a certain failure occurs on the vehicle-onboard machine or on the portable terminal, which is considered as a client side with respect to the service provider in this application form, the user may make a telephone call to a call center of the service provider, and consult about the occurred failure. However, the call center side has difficulty in recognizing the event occurred to the client side by means of the consultation over the telephone.
Thus, a method of causing the portable terminal or the vehicle-onboard machine to record an operation log representing an own operation, and analyzing the operation log after a failure occurs, and a method of displaying a message including a content of the failure and a handling method for the failure on the vehicle-onboard machine or the portable terminal when a failure occurs are conceivable.
For example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2009-253564, there is a description that an apparatus “includes a log accumulation part 29 for accumulating a log including an ID for identifying an event, an ID list storage part 28 for storing an ID list in which the ID of the event is specified, an acquisition control part 22 for identifying one ID list out of the storage of the ID list storing part 28 by analyzing a transmitted log acquisition request, a log extraction part 23 for extracting a log including the ID specified in the identified ID list, and a log information transmission part 25 for transmitting log information including the extracted log to a log acquisition request transmission source.”
Moreover, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2005-275753, there is a description that “A vehicle-onboard system of this invention includes a vehicle-onboard apparatus 10 to be installed on a vehicle so as to communicate to/from a road-side apparatus installed on a road side in an electronic toll collection (ETC) system and a navigation apparatus 20 to be installed on the vehicle, which are coupled to each other for communication. If abnormality relating to the vehicle-onboard apparatus 10 occurs, the vehicle-onboard apparatus 10 notifies the navigation apparatus 20 of an error code representing a type of the occurred abnormality. On the other hand, the navigation apparatus 20 stores, in a storage part 23, messages each representing a content of each error code and a handling method for an error, and displays, on a display part 27, a message corresponding to the error code notified by the vehicle-onboard apparatus 10. Thus, the content of the occurred error and the handling method can be immediately recognized by an occupant of the vehicle.”